Thoughts of Christmas

3 Comments December 25, 2020 Steve Wiggins

Christmas, in merry old England, used to be the day when bills were due. There are vestiges of that still. Just this past week, when my mind was on upcoming celebrations and family time, companies continue to email me their bills, reminding me that all celebrations are but temporary. Money’s the real thing, and it takes no holidays. While the holiday season may be subdued for some due to lack of travel, for me any day that I don’t need to leave the house is a good one. We had a pretty nasty patch of weather on Christmas Eve, and one might be tempted to say that the atmospheric conditions outside are frightful. There’s a coziness about staying indoors around the holidays. Besides, there’s a pandemic out there too.

We’ve got a quiet day planned at home with our usual traditions. We added a Yule log to our celebrations this year—much of what we now recognize as Christmas derived from the teutonic Yule. Otherwise, we are quiet people with rather simple tastes. Even if we can’t afford much, the holidays mean time off work. Time for those close to us without constantly having to auto-correct back to earning money at work. I frequently reflect on how distorted capitalism has made us. Our European colleagues have far more time off work than Americans do. They don’t seem to suffer for it. There’s not much light outside anyway, so why not hunker down a while? Reflect on what’s really important?

First thing this morning, after watering the tree, I fired up the computer to write a few words before the festivities began. The first two emails in my inbox were, as if on cue, bills. Computers have no idea this is a holiday, and our neighbor’s early morning car announcing its lock secured tells me that he’s just getting home from work. The fiction that we all have today off, as time home with family, plays out every year. Holidays are often the privilege of the affluent, which is why, I suppose, Saturnalia was marked by a reversal of roles for several days. Rome wasn’t exactly a friendly empire, but it wasn’t a capitalist one either. This Christmas I’m hoping that those who have to work today—healthcare workers, those who keep stores open for last-minute supplies, emergency workers of all kinds—will have adequate time for peace coming to them. Even non-essential work can be wearying. Let’s celebrate, thankful that we’ve survived these last few years at all. The bills will wait until tomorrow.

Awakening

3 Comments July 14, 2018 Steve Wiggins

Waking up for the first time in our new place, I felt a strange relief. I hadn’t realized how much you feel owned when you have a landlord. Slipping out of the bed while it’s still dark, vague shapes that eventually resolve into unpacked boxes lurk in the shadows. They mean me no harm. I go downstairs. Downstairs! Without revealing too much personal information here, I can say that I’ve always believed in sleeping upstairs. In our several apartments my wife and I have lived on one floor. Going to sleep meant walking down the hall into another room. It lacked proper transition. When we looked at houses it took some time before I could put my finger on it—we needed a two-story house. You go “up to bed” for a reason.

The thing about writing is that it’s an activity of habit. Not aware of the location of light switches yet, I shuffle slowly through my own personal towers of Babel. Find the coffee maker. Where do I go to write? Not wanting to wake my wife, I decide it should be downstairs. There’s the study, with its desk. Seems pretty obvious. Mug in hand, with no lights on, instinct drives me back to my usual chair in the living room. Habits are seldom planned. They happen. I’ve become used to writing electronically, but as I wanted badly to explain to the movers, I grew up writing on paper. Writers are readers and there are two things you don’t throw away—books and your old writings. Carpenters don’t ditch saws and hammers just because they’re heavy and numerous. There’s a kind of religious devotion here.

Don’t worry, I’ll soon be back to my more abstract topics on this blog. Religion and all that. Right now I’m in a transition and I’m wondering that if that means I’m now officially grown up. If so, does that mean abandoning my childhood dream of being a writer and facing the fact that all these boxes were moved in vain? Not having food in our new place, our first day we went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch. The locals were talking. Their concerns? Lawn care and propane. Everyday things. Clean-cut and suntanned, they can tell at a glance that I’m a stranger with my unkempt hair and prophetic beard. Is my writing fantasy just childhood gone to seed? No. Books and writings are my identity. The movers may have mixed them in with saucepans and power tools, but I know at a glance which boxes contain books. Soon they will be in every room of this house. That will make anywhere feel like home, even if I can’t find the lights.

The New Neighbors

1 Comment February 25, 2017 Steve Wiggins

Apartment dwellers often ponder new neighbors. If anything gives the lie to being in control of your own destiny, renting your domicile does. Still using the old, aristocratic terms landlord or landlady, we know that we are under someone else’s authority. “As long as you’re under my roof,” my bully of a step-father liked to huff, “you’ll obey my rules.” When you rent, you can’t choose your neighbors. Those who own the property have final say. If they play the stereo too loud (“game” is probably the modern equivalent, but I was born before Pong even came alone) and won’t listen to your plea for a more monastic setting, you throw yourself on the mercy of your lord or lady. We got new neighbors this week. Not just us, but the whole galaxy. Seven new earth-like planets—surely ruled by Trump-like dictators—have been discovered. Let’s hope they’re early to bed, early to rise types.

During the Bush administration I often fantasized about the aliens landing on the White House lawn. I thought, with a president so obviously lacking intelligence, what would our new neighbors think of us? Would they complain to the landlord? You’d think that after that long trip across cold, vast interstellar space they’d maybe have the right to expect to find the brightest and the best in charge, right? Mission accomplished. The sign says so right there. Or to put it in a modern key, “Earth first, Earth first.” If they’ve got their intergalactic television on, I hope it’s switched to a different channel.

Contact, the novel by Carl Sagan, suggested the first contact from the aliens would be of Adolf Hitler. Among the first poisoned radiation this planet flung off into space was the fascist propaganda of 1930s Germany. Earthlings, not yet tempered by the Trump brand, were shocked. Surely this is a sign of hostility! Unless, of course, you control both the legislative and executive branches. Then you can just decide not to show up at the town hall and tell everyone you’ve got more important things to do. So, what will our new neighbors think? Do they just want the bodies of their compatriots from Roswell back, or is it a more serious discussion to be held behind closed doors? After all, African slaves were merely chattels in a negotiation between a more powerful culture and unhuman indigenous dullards with nothing better to do. On the spaceship back to their extraterrestrial slave mines, I do hope they have the common decency to keep the music down to a reasonable level.